Aussie an Oscar favourite

Picture: AFPNicole Kidman, pictured at the media launch of The Hours in Berlin.

Nicole Kidman is Australia's hot favourite to score an
Oscar nomination when they are announced next Tuesday, but what about Dion
Beebe, Paul Brincat, David Lee and Luciana Arrighi?

Dion who? And who
are Paul Brincat, David Lee and Luciana Arrighi?

They're among the 15 or
so other Aussies with a good, if not strong, shot at earning an invite to next
month's 75th Academy Awards ceremony.

Geoffrey Rush, the 1996 Academy
Award best actor winner, has an outside shot this year as a supporting actor
nominee for his role in Frida.

But apart from Kidman,
Australia's best chances come from a faceless bunch.

Their names won't
be found in gossip columns and the paparazzi don't chase them down the street,
but they are Australians who sit among Hollywood's elite in the less glamorous
fields of sound, film editing, visual effects, art direction and cinematography.

Andrew Lesnie is the most notable among the non-celebrity Australian
Oscar nomination hopefuls.

Lesnie won the Oscar last year in the
cinematography category for Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the
Ring and is likely to be nominated again on Tuesday for the sequel,
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

Lesnie had to fend off
Aussie nominee cinematographer Donald McAlpine (Moulin Rouge) last year
to win the gold statuette and in†2003 there are at least three lensmen in
the running to continue Australia's great tradition in the category.

Lesnie's biggest Down Under threat is Dion Beebe, who shot the musical
Chicago.

Also in the hunt are Aussie cinematographers Dick Pope
(for Nicholas Nickleby) and Christopher Doyle, who worked on The
Quiet American and Rabbit-Proof Fence.

In the Academy's
best director category, Phillip Noyce is Australia's best chance.

Two
months ago, amid the blaze of publicity generated by Hollywood studio Miramax,
Noyce was being trumpeted as an Oscar nominee for The Quiet American
and Rabbit-Proof Fence, but his chances of a best director
nomination appear to have cooled.

The best indicator was the recent
announcement of nominees for the Directors Guild of America awards and Noyce's
name was missing.

Australia has two strong candidates in the best sound
Oscar category - Paul Brincat for Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the
Clones and David Lee for Chicago. Lee won the sound Academy Award
in 1999 for The Matrix.

In the Academy's visual effects
category, Ben Snow, who was nominated last year for the war epic Pearl
Harbor, is Australia's best hope.

Another 2002 Oscar nominee, film
editor Jill Billcock (Moulin Rouge), has a solid chance at scoring a
nomination this year for the Tom Hanks-Paul Newman movie, Road to
Perdition. Film editor Veronika Jenet is an outside hope for
Rabbit-Proof Fence.

Art direction has emerged as another strong
category for Australia this year.

Luciana Arrighi, who won the art
direction Oscar in 1992 for Howard's End, is in the running this year
for The Importance of Being Earnest while Roger Ford and Kerrie Brown,
who were nominated in 1995 for Babe, are also in contention for The
Quiet American.

In the acting stakes, Las Vegas bookmakers and
Hollywood experts believe Kidman will be the only Aussie actor nominated. They
also expect Kidman, for her portrayal of the mentally-troubled author Virginia
Woolf in The Hours, to go all the way and win the Oscar this year after
missing out in 2002 for Moulin Rouge.

Australian actresses with
outside chances of receiving a nomination are: Naomi Watts (The Ring);
Toni Collette (The Hours and About a Boy); Frances O'Connor
(The Importance of Being Earnest); and Rachel Griffiths (The
Rookie).

The Oscar nominations will be announced at a ceremony at
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills on Tuesday at
5.30am Los Angeles time (12.30am Wednesday AEDT)

The Oscar ceremony is
scheduled for Hollywood's Kodak Theatre on March 23.